_How! None at all?_ Cries the
Priest. _To be sure_, said the honest proselyte, _you have told me all
along that there it but one God; and yesterday I ate him._
This is sufficiently ridiculous; and yet if we fairly consider the whole
question of divinity there will be found no more absurdity in the notion
of our Benedict eating the Creator, than in Jews crucifying Him. Both
notions involve materiality. A God without body, parts, or passions,
could no more be nailed upon a cross than taken into the stomach. And if
it be urged there is something awful in the blasphemy of him who talks
of swallowing his God, the Author of this Apology can as conscientiously
urge that there is something very disgusting in the idea of a murdered
Deity.
Locke wrote rather disparagingly of 'many among us,' who 'will be found
upon inquiry, to fancy God in the shape of a man sitting in heaven, and
have other absurd and unfit conceptions of him.' As though it were
possible to think of shapeless Being, or as though it were criminal in
the superstitious to believe 'God made man after his own image.' A
'Philosophical Unbeliever,' who made minced meat of Dr.
Pages:
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80